Gut feeling: bacteria may inspire bowel treatment

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A substance produced by one of the many types of bacteria that inhabit the human gut may inspire a new kind of drug for inflammatory bowel disease, scientists said on Wednesday.

The researchers found that a complex sugar molecule made naturally by a species of intestinal bacteria called Bacteroides fragilis prevented the development of an animal version of inflammatory bowel disease in laboratory mice.

They expressed hope this sugar molecule could be developed as a natural treatment for inflammatory bowel disease.

"We are colonized in our intestine normally with many bacteria -- 100 trillion or so," Dennis Kasper, a professor of medicine, microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature, said in a telephone interview.

"In this mixture of bacteria, there are some bacteria that may induce disease, and there are some bacteria that may prevent disease," Kasper added.

Considering the huge number of bacteria in the gut -- there are roughly a thousand species -- the potential for discovering substances made by some of these microorganisms that have the potential to treat human diseases is promising, Kasper said.

Inflammatory bowel disease refers to a group of disorders in which the intestines become inflamed, probably due to an immune reaction of the body against its own intestinal tissue.

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are two major types of the disease. Symptoms include severe diarrhea and abdominal pain. There is no known cure for either condition.